'The file's gone,' he whispered.
'The Green File for the special minutes. It's been gone since Friday.'
CHAPTER THREE Alan Turner
It was a day to be nearly free; a day to stay in London and dream of the country. In St James's Park, the premature summer was entering its third week. Along the lake, girls lay like cut flowers in the unnatural heat of a Sunday afternoon in May. An attendant had lit an improbable bonfire and the smell of burnt grass drifted with the echoes of the traffic. Only the pelicans, hobbling fussily round their island pavilion, seemed disposed to move; only Alan Turner, his big shoes crunching on the gravel, had anywhere to go; for once, not even the girls could distract him.
His shoes were of a heavy brown brogue and much repaired at the welts. He wore a stained tropical suit and carried a stained canvas bag. He was a big, lumbering man, fair-haired, plain-faced and pale, with the high shoulders and square fingers of an alpinist, and he walked with the thrusting slowness of a barge; a broad, aggressive, policeman's walk, wilfully without finesse. His age was hard to guess. Undergraduates would have found him old, but old for an undergraduate. He could alarm the young with age, and the aged with his youth. His colleagues had long ceased to speculate. It was known that he was a late entrant, never a good sign, and a former fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford, which takes all kinds of people. The official Foreign Office publications were reserved.
While they shed a merciless light on the origin of all their other Turners, in the matter of Alan they remained tightlipped, as if, having considered all the facts, they felt that silence was the kindest policy.
'They've called you in too, then,' said Lambert, catching him up. 'I must say, Karfeld's really gone to town this time.'
'What the hell do they expect us to do? Man the barricades? Knit blankets?'
Lambert was a small, vigorous man and he liked it said of him that he could mix with anyone. He occupied a senior position in Western Department and ran a cricket team open to all grades.
They began the ascent of Clive Steps.
'You'll never change them,' said Lambert. 'That's my view. A nation of psychopaths. Always think they're being got at. Versailles, encirclement, stab in the back; persecution mania, that's their trouble.'
He allowed time for Turner to agree with him.
'We're bringing in the whole of the Department. Even the girls.'
'Christ, that'll really frighten them. That's calling up the reserves, that is.'
'This could put paid to Brussels, you know. Bang it clean on the nose. If the German Cabinet loses its nerve on the home front, we're all up a gum-tree.' The prospect filled him with relish. 'We shall have to find a quite different solution in that case.'
'I thought there wasn't one.'
'The Secretary of State has already spoken to their Ambassador; I am told they have agreed full compensation.'
'Then there's nothing to worry about, is there? We can get on with our weekend. All go back to bed.'
They had reached the top of the steps. The founder of India, one foot casually upon a plateau of vanquished bronze, stared contentedly past them in to the glades of the Park. 'They've kept the doors open.' Lambert's voice was tender with reverence. 'They're on the weekday schedule.
My, they are going it. Well,' he remarked, receiving no admiring echo, 'you go your way, I go mine. Mind you,' he added shrewdly, 'it could do us a lot of good. Unite the rest of Europe behind us against the Nazi menace. Nothing like the stamp of jackboots to stiffen the old alliances.' With a final nod of undeterred goodwill he was assumed in to the imperial darkness of the main entrance. For a moment, Turner stared after him, measuring his slight body against the Tuscan pillars of the great portico, and there was even something wistful in his expression, as if actually he would quite like to be a Lambert, small and neat and adept and unbothered. Rousing himself at last, he continued towards a smaller door at the side of the building. It was a scruffy door with brown hardboard nailed to the inside of the glass and a notice denying entrance to unauthorised persons. He had some difficulty getting through.
'Mister Lumley's looking for you,' said the porter. 'When you can spare a minute, I'm sure.'
He was a young, effeminate man and preferred the other side of the building. 'He was enquiring most particularly, as a matter of fact. All packed for Germany, I see.'
His transistor radio was going all the time; someone was reporting direct from Hanover and there was a roar in the background like the roar of the sea.
'Well, you'll get a nice reception by the sound of it. They've already done the library, and now they're having a go at the Consulate.'
'They'd done the library by lunchtime. It was on the one o'clock. The police have cordoned off the Consulate. Three deep. There's not a hope in hell of them getting anywhere near.'
'It's got worse since then,' the porter called after him. 'They'reburning books in the market place; you wait!'
'I will. That's just what I bloody well will do.' His voice was awfully quiet but it carried a long way; a Yorkshire voice, and common as a mongrel.
'He's booked your passage to Germany. You ask Travel Section! Overland route and Second Class! Mr Shawn goes First!' Shoving open the door of his room he found Shawn lounging at the desk, his Brigade of Guards jacket draped over the back of Turner's chair. The eight buttons glinted in the stray sunbeams which, bolder than the rest, had penetrated the coloured glass. He was talking on the telephone. 'They're to put everything in one room,' he said in that soothing tone of voice which reduces the calmest of men to hysteria. He had said it several times before, apparently, but was repeating it for the benefit of simpler minds.
'With the incendiaries and the shredder. That's point one. Point two, all locally employed staff are to go home and lie low; we can't pay compensation to German citizens who get hurt on our behalf. Tell them that first, then call me back. Christ Almighty!' he screamed to Turner
as he rang off, 'have you ever tried to deal with that man?'
'What man?'
'That bald-headed clown in E and 0. The one in charge of nuts and bolts.'
'His name is Crosse.' He flung his bag in to the corner. 'And he's not a clown.'
'He's mental,' Shawn muttered, losing courage, 'I swear he is.'
'Then keep quiet about it or they'll post him to Security.'
'Lumley's looking for you.'
'I'm not going,' Turner said. 'I'm bloody well not wasting my time. Hanover's a D post. They've no codes, no cyphers, nothing. What am I supposed to do out there? Rescue the bloody Crown Jewels?'
'Then why did you bring your bag?'
He picked up a sheaf of telegrams from the desk.
'They've known about that rally for months. Everyone has, from Western Department down to us. Chancery reported it in March. For once, we saw the telegram. Why didn't they evacuate staff? Why didn't they send the kids home? No money, I suppose. No third-class seats available. Well, sod them!'
'Lumley said immediately.'
'Sod Lumley too,' said Turner, and sat down. 'I'm not seeing him till I've read the papers.'
'It's policy not to send them home,' Shawn continued, taking up Turner's point. Shawn thought of himself as attached rather than posted to Security Department; as resting, as it were, between appointments, and he missed no opportunity to demonstrate his familiarity with the larger political world. 'Business as usual, that's the cry. We can't allow ourselves to be stampeded by mob rule. After all, the Movement is a minority. The British lion,' he added, making an unconfident joke, 'can't allow itself to be upset by the pinpricks of a few hooligans.'